To alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. –Homer Simpson
Having recently been sounded out about writing a biweekly column on the sugarcane processing industry in Brazil, I immediately wonder whether I can get away with a veiled reference or two to former Brooklyn College anthropologist Sidney Mintz, best known for his book Sweetness and Power:
Mintz has published several books and many articles and reviews. In 1956, his study of a sugarcane village became part of The People of Puerto Rico, edited by Julian Steward and others. In 1960, he published Worker in the Cane, the life story of a cane worker who came from that same village. And in 1985, he wrote Sweetness and Power, which is concerned with the history of sugar worldwide. He has since written papers on the anthropology of food, and initiated research on the global role of soybeans and soy foods, while continuing his Caribbean work.
No, check that. The truth is that the first thought that occurs to me is a sequence from The Simpsons that takes a piss out of the use of ethanol to fuel automobiles.
Homer, hearing of this new-fangled gasohol fad, drops into one of his famous dream sequences, imagining himself stopping in at his local gas station and sipping from the pump as he fills up his tank: “One for me,” he says to the car, ” and one for you.”
If you give me a minute I can cite the episode number. Somewhere out there is an entire collection of scripts, lovingly transcribed by fans, for download over BitTorrent. One could make a searchable database of it.
After all, The Simpsons — not Wikipedia, which is lousy with shills of various sorts — is the ultimate source of all postmodern practical wisdom.
At any rate, an occasional variation in my routine, and a chance to chat with sector analysts, agribusiness economists, and other human beings I do not usually talk to these days. I would actually enjoy going out to one of these plants and seeing them generating electricity from the bagaço.
Of the canaviais of the Northeast, I have vivid memories of a day spent driving around the Recife metropolitan area with a driver known as Mr. Moustache. Quite a day. In my imagination, the memory is associated with Regina Casé as the sexy boia-fria in Tu, Eu e Ele.
I used to write a column — long forgotten, and deservedly so — on the post-Enron energy services landscape.
It was commissioned by an old college buddy with a firm that makes automated facilities management software so you can measure the energy heartbeat of your building at all times using a BlackBerry or Palm Pilot. Neato. I am a sucker for that sort of thing. Smart buildings and what not.
Personally, I can turn on the stereo, open the garage door, lock the car, and operate the air conditioning without moving from where I am sitting right now. It’s not exactly having an AI-driven smart house that you develop a personal relationship with — “I am afraid I cannot allow you to drink another caipirinha, Dave, if you plan to drive later” — but it’s a start.
At any rate, I have a column to knock out by next week. I think that between waves of bankruptcies and a “this fuel-grade ethanol certified slave-labor free” program recently launched, I have enough factoids assembled to make a start of things.
I find I am gaining more traction here in Sambodia as a freelance journalist than as a translator, which is a bit surprising to me.
Decent professional Portuguese-to-English translators seem to be in short supply here, judging from what comes down the content pipeline, but publishers of these translations don’t seem to have enough English themselves to realize they are publishing “English as she is spoke.”
Always embarrassing to see.
